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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Desdichado" data-source="post: 1027323" data-attributes="member: 2205">They're oft repeated because they are perennial problems that remain unaddressed, not because non-FR fanboys are broken records that don't know what they're talking about.  And, seriously, how can you say that FR is well thought out?  Any cursorial glance of the history of the setting proves that to be completely fallacious -- FR was cobbled together over the better part of a decade and a half by folks that didn't care or didn't even always know what the vision of the setting was.  The fact that 3e FR tries to explain away some of the resultant silliness doesn't make the setting well-thought out, it just means the current authors had a modicum of sense, and did some feverish retconning to make it try to fit.So your answer to that issue is handwaving "it's fantasy, it's fiction, not enough data?"  Hopefully you can see why critics find this response unsatisfactory.  Of course you'll continue to hear this criticism if this is the best answer FR's got.I hardly know what to say to that.  You have egyptians, you have meso-americans, you have pseudo-Chinese when Kara-Tur was tacked on, you have the Mongols -- you either are being wilfully blind or you simply don't know what you're talking about.Don't assume FR critics haven't read the main books.  I'm mostly a critic, and as I've said many times on this thread, I have the main book and consider it a valuable resource.  Some cultures are indeed interesting -- the Red Wizards of Thay I find fascinating, Calimport I find interesting.  But nobody said Kalamar was more diverse.  Maybe if you read any of the actual complaints, you'd realize that the senseless diversity of FR culture in general is the complaint.  It's not a lack of diversity, it's a lack of anything tying them together.  This post makes me wonder if you're just cutting and pasting your arguments from some other thread where someone maybe made different complaints about the setting?Absolutely.  Wonder why they had to put that in so prominantly at the very front of the book?  You can handwave it aside all you want, but some groups really struggle with players who can't accept any Realms other than their own personal vision filtered down through scores of novels, many of which were not written with the game in mind in the least.  It may not be a problem for you and your group, but you can hardly say it's not a problem just because of a sentence or two in the Introduction.  That doesn't really solve anything.Again, nobody in this thread, at least, has complained about NPCs taking center stage, they've complained about the logic of why these ubermensch wouldn't take center stage.  It's a gap in critical thinking that turns people off, it's not a question of "I have to use Elminster to actually save the day" here.  Again, have you read any of the responses in this thread, or are you retreading some prior argument?  You're actually not addressing the problem pointed out in this thread.So do I.  That doesn't mean I say "It's FANTASY so anything goes."  That is, and I use the word again, sloppy.  It may not bother you, or even most gamers, for that matter, but it clearly bothers those of us who complain about it.Absolutely.  There's nothing wrong with that.  More power to you if the FR is right up your alley.  But don't present your tastes as truisms or facts, and not expect someone with a different opinion to accept it.</blockquote>

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